Vendors

Accolades recognises the winners at this year's ARN IT Industry Awards - the best of the best. Over the course of the next few weeks, ARN will be running their stories. The Channel Choice Awards were selected through an online voting process by the channel itself. Vendors, Distributors and Resellers alike were invited to vote on their favourite companies over the past 12 months.

Corporate Express, Channel Choice Reseller of the Year

Corporate Express is on a roll amongst the channel community, having now been recognised as the Channel Choice Reseller of the Year for the second time in a row.

What makes a reseller so well regarded amongst its peers? A genuine desire to see the channel, vendors, distributors and competitive resellers alike be successful.

“We attend a lot of roundtables, both hosted by ARN and a lot of the industry vendors out there,” Corporate Express general manager of IT solutions, Ahmed Latif, said. “I personally – and I know that my team as well – don’t join these sorts of events for individual gain, we care about the channel.”

Latif sits on the partner advisory board for HP’s PSG business, for instance, and there he said he advocated what is good for the whole channel, rather than looking just for some benefits for Corporate Express itself.

“That resonates with our piers in the industry,” Latif said. “Whether the vendor part of the industry, or even our competitors, I think there’s some recognition there that a strong reseller community is important for all of us.”

It’s been a busy year for the reseller internally, too. It’s set up a managed services business, supported by 30 staff and a help-desk to target medium sized customers of 250-1000 seats in size.

Latif believes the direction the company is set on is solid, and there are no plans to change its focus in the near future.
“We’re not changing our direction, and we’re still going to work hard for the brand of Corporate Express within the IT industry,” he said.

“We’re going to ensure that we’re all getting a fair go out there. Winning once was nice, twice was fantastic and if we can do it three times in a row we’d be absolutely ecstatic.

Slideshows

Selling beyond the CIO – How partners can influence the new breed of tech buyers

This ARN Roundtable, in association with Oracle, highlighted the emergence of a new breed of technology buyer, assessing how partners can engage outside of IT, and the skills required to sell across new business units.

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